


I'll make the best of being flesh and bone

by lemon_verbena



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Divorced Robin Ellacott, F/M, Ghost Cormoran Strike
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:08:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26328388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemon_verbena/pseuds/lemon_verbena
Summary: “Good morning, Cormoran,” she says, draping her jacket on the coat-rack. “How are you?”“Still dead, but other than that, just peachy,” he says from his spot on the office sofa.Robin works in the most haunted office on Denmark Street. She doesn’t mind it at all. Actually, she’s gone and done the most ridiculous thing: she’s fallen in love with a dead man.Cormoran Strike is a ghost. Trapped in-between life and the endless nothingness of the Netherworld, he can’t do much of anything. But he’s working a plan that could change that.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 59
Kudos: 72





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Short chapters and no smut thus far, a departure from my usual fare, but hopefully enjoyable nonetheless! Tags to be updated as chapters are posted.
> 
> First chapter going up today for lindmea, on her birthday. Many happy returns!
> 
> For fic updates, check [this fic's tag on my tumblr.](https://lemon-verbena-writes.tumblr.com/tagged/fic%3A-flesh-and-bone)
> 
> And don't miss [Strike & Ellacott Whumptober!](https://lemon-verbena-writes.tumblr.com/post/628461326985035776) All details in the linked tumblr post.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and please enjoy the fic :)

Robin lets herself into the office, head turning without conscious thought to look for the room’s usual occupant.

“Morning,” comes his voice, and she smiles.

“Good morning, Cormoran,” she says, draping her jacket on the coat-rack. “How are you?”

“Still dead, but other than that, just peachy,” he says from his spot on the office sofa. 

She rolls her eyes at him. “Have you been watching American shows on Netflix again?” she asks, knowing full well that he has, seeing as he’s been using her account. He only chuckles dryly.

He’s put on the kettle for her, as he often does these days, allowing her to brew a cuppa as soon as she arrives. It’s little things like that that make his haunting of her office so palatable.

“What’s on the docket for today?” Robin asks, knowing that Cormoran enjoys feeling useful. He can’t go beyond the threshold, although he can go anywhere within the building— a small mercy, she thinks, at least he’s not stuck in the two rooms that comprise the office. 

“You’ve got the usual correspondence,” he replies, nodding at the stack of post sitting on her in-tray. “Email, too, considering the number of bells that rang last night. After that, His Majesty will probably make his appearance around noon, sign a few papers, make some noises about being overworked, then toddle off to the pub for a few rounds, leaving us to our own devices.”

“So the usual, then,” Robin says, and smiles at her ghost. Cormoran’s wry smile is as familiar as her schedule by this point. 

“Don’t see what the point of this office even is,” Cormoran complains, not for the first time. “It’s not as though His Majesty ever has any clients, or any business at all, really.”

The bitterness over this injustice is apparent, but Robin allows it to pass unremarked as she logs in to her computer. She agrees with him, of course, but… 

“If he didn’t keep this office, I wouldn’t be able to come see you every day, now would I?” she points out, which prompts a sullen nod.

“I’d miss you,” he says, surprising Robin; Cormoran’s not one for sentiment. She thinks it must be a holdover from his life; considering his scars and missing leg, he must’ve had a rough one. Not that he talks about it much, but she’s smart enough to make inferences. 

“I’d miss you too,” she says, and means it. “You know you’re the reason I’ve kept this job, don’t you?”

“What, don’t you like sorting through the correspondence and finances of the most boring ponce in the world?” Cormoran asks, pulling himself upright on the sofa to look at her. “He rarely had anyone for longer than a week, except the layabouts who liked having nothing to do, and he fired most of them after a while.”

“I know,” Robin says. “The agency was shocked when he hired me on.”

“Their loss was my gain,” Cormoran says, getting up to make himself a cup of tea. Robin’s noticed that he rarely thinks to get himself food or drink unless she’s there with him; her theory is that it simply doesn’t occur to him otherwise. Why should it? He doesn’t need sustenance. He’s dead.

She reminds herself of this fact, immutable as it is, as she logs in to her work email. Cormoran Strike is dead, a ghost who haunts her office. He’s only real within the walls of this building. 

He sets the last of the sleeve of biscuits on her desk beside her mug before returning to his place on the sofa, and her heart clenches in her chest. It is so very unfair, she thinks, that they did not meet when he was still alive. 

“Goodness,” she says aloud. “The subject line on this email sounds like the worst sort of drivel from the Sun.”

“Let’s hear it, then,” Cormoran says, his eyes fixed on her as she livens up his afterlife. She reads the email dramatically, and together they write a suitable reply, and on to the next; it’s part of their routine.

She is the only person Cormoran interacts with, mainly because she is the only person who can see him most of the time. Of course, if he were to make the effort, Cormoran could make himself visible to anyone on the premises, but why should he bother? He takes no joy from frightening people, and he has no way to appear casually except as a patron of the music shop on the first floor, and he’s not especially interested in the instruments or the people who play them. 

Robin, however, interests him. She is the only thing to do so with any regularity, and this is what he ascribes the warmth in his cold chest to when he sees her every weekday.

Once the correspondence has been handled, Robin pulls out the day’s paper, and they do the crossword together, she reading the clues aloud and he calling out the answers he knows and heckling the clue-writers as he smokes an insubstantial cigarette. 

“Texter’s chuckle, three letters,” Robin says, and at Cormoran’s look of blank incomprehension she snorts. “L-O-L, laugh out loud.”

“What on earth is the youth of today coming to,” Cormoran proclaims melodramatically, and Robin ignores him in favor of pencilling in the answer. 

“Canterbury saint, six,” she says in reply.

“Anselm,” he says after a long moment, exhaling smoke she cannot smell. “Does it fit?”

“It does,” Robin says, filling in the letters. “Were you Catholic?”

“I don’t think you stop being Catholic after death,” Cormoran replies thoughtfully. “That being rather the point of the whole business, as I understand it. To answer your question, though, no, I wasn’t much of anything by way of religion. I was a student of the classics, though, and there’s rather a lot of Latin pertaining to the Church.”

“Ah,” Robin says. She doesn’t like to interject when he talks about himself, because he does it so rarely. “No wonder you’re so good at those clues.”

“Glad to know those years at Oxford weren’t a total waste,” he says, and takes another drag. 

Robin laughs and reads the next clue. Thus are their days together, the smooth progression of their time. 

When they finish the crossword, Robin hands him the rest of the newspaper to peruse while she deals with the boring daily minutia of her job. Mainly, she ensures that her employer’s books are in order and his few clients receive their billables on time, and are then billed on schedule. It’s not especially time-consuming, but she knows that without someone to handle these matters for him, her employer would simply never do them at all. 

There’s a reason she’s paid to be here, after all, and it’s because His Majesty is a scatter-brained child of privilege who has chosen to spend his days playing at being a business-owner. By having an office and an executive assistant, he feels very important and successful, and he overpays Robin out of a total lack of understanding of what an executive assistant’s salary should be for a “company” that consists of two people. Robin makes nearly as much as she would at a much larger company, and spends the bulk of her time chatting with the most interesting person she’s ever met, who happens to be dead.

Her life, Robin reflects, is deeply strange and rather unusual.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Picks up directly from the end of the previous chapter; I anticipate updating weekly on Fridays. 
> 
> It's nearly the 15th! Cannot wait!

Her employer makes his daily visit to the office around 11, as usual; he asks Robin is there have been any calls (there haven’t), if there have been any updates from their clients (no), goes into his office to looks and feel busy for between 30 and 45 minutes, then goes out for a “business luncheon,” to be followed by a “client meeting.” Robin never remarks on the impressive surfeit of business luncheons and client meetings, considering how little business actually gets accomplished from one day to the next and how few clients ever hire on, which preserves the fiction neatly.

By 12:30 at the latest, His Majesty has departed, leaving Robin and Cormoran to decide what to get for their own lunch. Robin knows it’s the one meal that Cormoran eats regularly, because it is the one meal a day that she shares with him. 

“Chinese work for you?” she asks, rummaging through the manila folder of takeaway menus she keeps in her desk. “I’m craving dumplings.”

“Yeah,” Cormoran says from beneath the newspaper. Robin’s fairly certain he’s been napping. “Garlic chicken and an egg roll, please.”

She’s already got the online order page open, and adds his selection to the bag. She expenses her lunches, on the premise that her boss is doing it, and he makes more money than she does. If he cares, he’s never said anything; Robin has a suspicion that His Majesty doesn’t pay attention to the papers he signs. If she were a less scrupulous person… but she isn’t, lucky for him. 

“Should be here in about thirty minutes,” Robin says once the order’s been placed. 

“Alright,” Cormoran replies. “That’s fine. Time moves differently for me. Thanks, though.”

“Does it?” Robin asks, intrigued. “I’ve wondered. It would be awfully boring if you had to be aware of time as it passes, forever.”

He makes a noise of agreement. “If I stop paying attention, I can miss hours… days, even. Early on, I missed the entirety of a winter when I took a nap. Woke up to snowmelt and birdsong. Disorienting as fuck.”

“Sort of like... falling asleep after work and waking up before supper?” Robin asks, reaching for a comparison that she can grasp.

“Like that, to an extreme,” Cormoran says. “But I’ve gotten better at time by this point. I can skip the boring parts and just pay attention to the good stuff.”

“Like what?” Robin asks. Cormoran so rarely discusses the actual experience of being a ghost. She doesn’t know how he died, or exactly when; doesn’t know what unfinished business ties him to this plane of existence. But prying will get her no-where with him, and googling feels like the worst sort of prying, so she waits for these moods and asks as much as she dares.

“Arsenal games,” Cormoran says, ticking it off on his fingers. “The occasional real cigarette, and you.”

He says it so matter-of-factly that Robin nearly misses this declaration. 

“Me?” she says.

The look Cormoran gives her says eloquently, “yes, you, don’t be daft.”

“You’re the only person I get to speak to,” he says, which… yes, fair. “But also, you’re intelligent and interesting, and I like talking to you.”

Robin blinks at him. “Would you have told me this when you were alive?” she asks before she can think better of it. “If we were both alive and— worked together, I suppose would be the closest thing to this.”

“No, probably not,” Cormoran says, shaking his head with a wry smile. “I played my cards close to my chest, when I had one. But I’ve learned some of the value of being upfront by now.”

Robin smiles back at him, telling herself that it’s totally inappropriate to find the ghost haunting her office charming or attractive. Her heart ignores this and skips a futile beat, hoping for more proof that he cares for her too. 

“Where do you get real cigarettes?” she asks instead.

“Bum them off the musicians downstairs,” he says with a shrug. “When there’s a show, no one’s paying a lot of attention, and half of them smoke, so it’s not hard.”

“Ah,” Robin says. “I hadn’t realized you missed it.”

“I can conjure up my own,” he says, leaning his head back against the cushion. He pats the breast pocket of his coat, from which peeks a half-pack of cigarettes which will never run out now. “But it’s not anything close to a real one. I think the best part is the heat.”

“Are you cold?” 

“Yes,” he says, eyes closed. “Always.”

Robin does not tell him that she’d be happy to help warm him up. She thinks it, though, and turns back to her computer screen to distract herself from the thought.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday! Have an update. 
> 
> Who else has finished Troubled Blood? Goodness! What a ride. Come chat with me [on tumblr](https://lemon-verbena-writes.tumblr.com/) about it!

“Do you have any weekend plans?” Cormoran asks her, late in the day. It’s Friday, which means she will not see him until Monday morning. She used to fret about him, rattling about the office with nothing to do— this was what had prompted her giving him access to her Netflix account— but now she knows that he doesn’t experience time the same way as she does.

“Nothing much,” Robin says, staring blindly at her computer screen. “Groceries, laundry. Might get a haircut.” She flips the ends of her long hair to illustrate.

Cormoran’s hand ruffles his mop of curls unconsciously. “Nothing dramatic, I hope,” he says. 

“Oh?” she says, eyes focusing on his face. She tries not to stare at him, but she likes his face, it’s twice-broken nose and scarred lip. “Why not?”

His expression is that of a man caught. “It’s— y’know— it’s nice,” he says. “As it is.”

Robin smiles at him, pleased. “Why thank you,” she says. “Just a trim, I promise.”

“Good,” Cormoran says, and settles on the sofa with his legs up on the coffee table. He’s been reading a book this afternoon, one that Robin’s seen before but never paid attention to. 

He’s often reading, whatever he can pick up from the other residents of the building, or books that Robin brings him from the library. Crime thrillers, mostly, some new releases, sometimes things he reads a review for in the paper. This doesn’t look like one of those, though; it’s thick and heavy, bound in brown leather, and reminds Robin of a prop out of a wizard’s lair.

“Reading anything interesting?” she asks, looking back at her computer screen. 

“Mm,” Cormoran says. “Something of a project for me, actually.”

“What, like Les Miserables?” Robin asks. “I’ve tried that one twice. Can’t get past the bishop.”

He laughs. “No, although that reminds me that I never finished that one either. Actually, this is more boring, if you can believe it.”

He holds the tome aloft for Robin to see the title, _Handbook for the Recently Deceased_ embossed on the cover in worn letters.

“Recently?” she says, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, that’s the title,” he says with a shrug. “Been working on it since I got it. I’m more than halfway through.”

“Anything I should know?” Robin asks, trying for a light tone.

Cormoran gives her a sharp look. “Not for a good long time, I should hope,” he says. They never discuss the fact that as far as either of them can tell, the only reason she was able to see him so easily when she first came to this building was that at the time, she was actively contemplating ending her life. The theory is that she was drifting close enough to the Netherworld to be able to see a ghost who wanted to be seen; it’s a tenuous place to be, in-between life and death like that. They do not discuss the fact that Cormoran has, in many ways but especially this one, saved Robin.

She tries to return the favor, in the small ways she can— saving him from boredom, from loneliness, from the echoing expanse of time that lies before him. But she can never truly repay him for the gift he gave her, the day he saw her more clearly than anyone else in her life and she saw him in return. 

Robin shakes her head. No, she plans to live for a good long time. “I’ve got the rest of eternity to be dead,” she says. “I’m not in a hurry.”

“Good,” Cormoran says with a firm nod. Robin doesn’t know exactly how old he is, but he looks between 35 and 45 to her eye. She tends to think he’s on the younger end of that range, mainly because he lived a hard-knock life and those tend to age people prematurely. But he died young, far younger than he should have. Because if she's correct, he died at close to her own age now. God, she'll cry if she thinks about it too hard.

“Anything odd or funny?” she asks instead. “I could use a laugh.”

“It’s dull as dust, mostly,” Cormoran says with a sigh. “Which is about right for a book about being dead. It’s more like a rulebook than light reading. It might’ve carried me off, if I weren’t already here.”

She rolls her eyes, as he’d hoped she would. Cormoran does not want to tell Robin why he’s returned to this project, which he had abandoned long ago: reading between the lines, he’s got a suspicion that there may be a way for a sufficiently stubborn ghost to return to the land of the living. He’s not sure how difficult it is, but for the first time since he found out that Charlotte had married Jago, he’s got a reason to want to come back.

The reason sits at her computer, not looking at him, which allows Cormoran to look at her. The smile that lurks at the corner of her mouth, waiting to be coaxed out; the glint of the gold watch on her right wrist, her left hand conspicuously bare of any jewelry at all. The pale pink of her blouse makes her look even more delicate and luminous than usual, and Cormoran wonders again what her skin must feel like, right where her neck meets her shoulder. This strip of skin taunts him, peeking out her blouses, shadowed by her hair; being dead has changed his priorities, it seems. 

He’s quite sure that if he just keeps reading, he’ll find a way to become— if not fully alive, then at least fully corporeal. He can interact with inanimate objects within the confines of his building, and can touch the living if he concentrates, but to be able to step outside, beyond the front door? To be able to hold a hand, kiss a mouth— these are luxuries beyond him.

He wants, more than anything, to be able to follow Robin out of the office and into The Real World, as he thinks of it. The rest of reality, not just the vacant attic flat-turned-storage, two offices, and music shop that consist of his existence. If Robin hadn’t come in, he might have finally drawn himself a door and walked through, off to the numb nothingless of the rest of the afterlife, but he can’t imagine that now. 

Now, when Robin comes in five days a week, with her books and takeaway lunches and crosswords and laughter. Now, when he wants to be alive more than he hates slogging through the endless clauses and doublespeak of the Handbook. 

“I’m off, then,” Robin says, closing up for the day. He watches as she logs off the work accounts and shuts everything down. She packs her things and puts on her jacket, giving him a smile before turning off the lights. 

They don’t make a big deal over her departures, because if they did, it would become unbearable; she simply slips out, and Cormoran considers allowing himself to fade into the state of hibernation that was his default state of being before Robin came into his afterlife. He usually doesn’t reawaken until the graphic designer downstairs slams the door each morning, giving Cormoran enough time to turn on the kettle and make sure the thermostat is set to where Robin likes it. 

Tonight, though, he keeps reading. 

Only the stubbornest ghosts are able to claw their way back into being, Cormoran thinks to himself. And he is nothing if not stubborn. If there’s a way, he’ll find it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this week, but I don't think you'll be too disappointed...

Robin spends her weekend alone in her little flat, making batches of meals to reheat for her dinner during the week and catching up on the latest gossip from home with her mum. 

“Have you called that nice young man from the grocery shop?” her mother asks, after recounting the most recent exploits of her brother Jonathan. 

“No,” Robin admits after a pause that probably answered for her. “And before you go on about it, I wasn’t very interested in him to begin with.”

“Love, I’m afraid you’re not interested in anyone,” her mum sighs. “I know it’s been hard for you, after— after the divorce, and all, but you shouldn’t let that sour you on men forever. It’s been long enough, you’re allowed to move on.”

“I know, mum,” Robin says, twisting a lock of hair around her finger. She cannot tell the truth: she’s moved on to the ghost of the man who haunts her office. And she can hear the words her mum’s not saying, _you’re not getting any younger, you know._

“Alright,” Linda sighs, sounding unconvinced. “I just worry that you’re lonely, all by yourself in London like you are.”

“I’m not all by myself,” Robin says. “I promise.”

“Alright,” her mum says again, still sounding worried. Robin asks after Martin to change the subject, and makes noises of agreement while Linda worries over one of her other offspring for a while.

Later that night, while half-watching a reality cooking show and eating her pasta, Robin decides that she really does need to move on. She cannot go about being in love with a dead man. At least, not a dead man whom she sees five days a week. She resolves to start getting over Cormoran as soon as possible. 

At midnight, staring at the ceiling and trying to convince herself that her bed doesn’t feel too big for one person, Robin wishes again for the nth time that she could have met Cormoran when he was still alive.

Would they have bonded so closely, so quickly if they hadn’t met under their specific circumstances? She’d like to think so. 

But there’s no way around it. Being in love with a ghost is no good, especially when the ghost himself doesn’t seem to have anything beyond a warm fondness for her. Maybe being dead removes the urgency of feeling? She slips into unconsciousness while pondering how the lack of a corporeal form might change one’s experience of emotions.

Cormoran, sitting in his usual spot on the office sofa, is at that very moment reading and re-reading a footnote of a sidebar annotation that says, in very tangled language, that a ghost can be granted a corporeal form and a new lifespan if they can find a living human being who can not only see them, but marry them.

“...in a legally and spiritually binding agreement to the satisfaction of both parties, witnessed by a minimum of one (1) living persons, in a manner such that both parties remain bound until such time as one or both pass through to the Neitherworld…” he mutters aloud, checking for trickery, double-crossing clauses, and other pitfalls. “The deceased party will be granted a fully corporeal body in the manner of their previous form, including but not limited to any damage, distress, missing limbs, maiming, scarring, etcetera, minus such damage as was received in the act of their original death…”

Despite his lack of a body, he’s certainly experiencing a strong emotion, or rather a cocktail of them: excitement, trepidation, disbelief, fear, a growing warmth in the vicinity of where his heart once resided.

What is he going to do with this information?

Well, propose to Robin, obviously.

And what if she says no?

And what if she says _yes?_


End file.
